Without a doubt, this is my favorite time of year for seasonal brews.
Sure, we craft beer lovers are reveling in the party favorites like pumpkin beers and Oktoberfests. However, I’m most excited about the Wet Hop ales. Hops are harvested only once a year, around late Summer/early Fall, and many breweries take this time to celebrate the glorious hops by making special brews to honor the season.
Yes, as a devout “hop head” this is like my holiday! The terms fresh ale and harvest ale are often used interchangeably, but now I’m discovering that they can mean different things…
Read the full article...
The Great American Beer Festival came to an end last weekend, and now that the fog has cleared I can recount the past week’s events.
This was my second GABF and this year managed to outdo last year.
If you haven’t had the chance to attend a GABF, it’s as much about the events outside the festival as it is the festival itself.
Here are my highlights:
Read the full article...
Last year was my first Great American Beer Festival. What’s the most important thing I learned? Get yourself a strategy.
I THOUGHT I had a strategy last year – “Yea I’ll check out Dogfish, maybe see what Pizza Port is serving, yada yada yada….”
Didn’t work. After a few beers and being caught up in the excitement, my plan went down the shitter and I was playing GABF whack a mole.
This year will be different.
Read the full article...
Mutualism: The way two organisms biologically interact where each individual derives a fitness benefit (i.e. increased survivorship). Source: Wikipedia
The oxpecker bird eats parasites from a zebra. The zebra stays healthy and the oxpecker gets a meal. Win-win.
Does mutualism exist in the beer world? I believe it does.
Read the full article...
Important September events:
- The Great American Beer Festival
- The arrival of wet hop beers
- My 27th birthday
We’ll focus on #1 today, talk about #2 later this month, and totally forget about #3 because honestly who cares after you turn 21.
Read the full article...
725 – that is the number of new breweries in planning according to a recent Brewers Association press release.
It’s an 86% increase over last year’s figure. All of this growth in craft brewing begs the question – how will these breweries compete for the same craft beer drinker’s dollar?
Read the full article...
A few months ago I mentioned my new found love for chocolate and beer.
In that post, I explained how a gift of gourmet chocolate to my girlfriend woke me up to a world not too different from the beer world: mainstream crappy products sprinked with delicious gems.
I entered this unexplored world excited but a total noob, so I asked my chocolatier friend Jenny to help me out:
“Jenny”, I said, “What is some chocolate that isn’t hard to find, not too expensive, but is a good introduction to gourmet chocolate?”
“Chocolove”, she replied.
Read the full article...
When you hear talks about the best beer cities in America, the same names always come up: Denver (represent!), Portland, Philly, Asheville, and San Diego.
I recently had the pleasure of visiting the last one as my girlfriend and I took a much needed vacation to Southern California. It was our first time there, and I wanted to see what all the beer talk was about.
Read the full article...
A Brew on Premise is an interesting business model. It’s essentially homebrewing away from home.
Read the full article...
I haven’t mentioned The Homebrew Academy in a while and we have a bunch of new BillyBrew readers so I thought it was a good time to tell everyone what’s been going on with this project. The Academy is something I launched late last year as an online training program that teaches people how to homebrew.
Read the full article...
